Madoka's Boys
by JuniperGentle
Summary: She is the only girl who travels in the company of the famous, handsome and apparently unattached Gan Gan Galaxy and their friends - a chance that hundreds of girls would die for. Now that Valentine's Day is approaching, Madoka's friends have been asking questions about the exact relationships in the group... Hints of past Ryukaru


**Madoka's Boys**

Madoka pushed her glasses up to rest on her forehead and sighed. There. Finished at last. Poor Pegasus – Gingka really did give his blade quite the battering when he decided to battle seriously, which naturally was all the time. She didn't mind fixing it, though. It was therapeutic, in a way.

Pegasus glinted at her happily as she set the blade down with its fellows, Eagle, Leone, Libra, Sagittario and Striker. All of them had been badly in need of repair after all the battling they had done recently. Madoka was very proud of all of them, beys and bladers both, for the victories that they had achieved and the fame they had reached across the world.

But they weren't the only ones with battles to fight. Madoka had some of her own, though very, very different. The girls at school had been acting even sillier than usual. Of course, they all knew that Madoka was the mechanic for the world-famous Gan Gan Galaxy team, and so as February drifted by the questions would become more and more likely to appear.

"Hey, Madoka? Which one do you want to ask you out on Valentine's Day?"

"Which one what?"

Her friends would shake their heads. "Oh come on, Madoka. Your team! Gan Gan Galaxy and the others! They're all so _amazing..."_

"Yeah," She'd start saying, but they would be streets ahead of her.

"So which one do you like best, Madoka?"

"Uh..."

"Oh, it's _got_ to be Tsubasa – I mean, he's so _dreamy..._ he's such a gentleman, and you just _know_ he'd be a wonderful dad – look at how well he looks after that Yuu kid!"

"No, no, no, Madoka's a quiet one – she'd go for the bad boy. It's definitely Kyouya. Just _looking_ at him makes me melt... those _eyes..._ Hey, Madoka, does he purr when he's happy?"

"Wh-?"

"No, she's closest to Gingka, aren't you? He's so sweet, I bet he'd do anything for you, wouldn't he?"

"What about Masamune? Hot foreign boyfriend, why say no?"

"How about more than one of them? I'm sure they'd share if you asked – you could always threaten not to fix their beyblades unless you did. Best of all possible worlds..."

_"WHAT? NO!" _

And so it would continue, and Madoka would object that they were her _friends,_ and she was _their_ friend. It really wasn't any deeper than that, honestly!

But that was just the thing. Madoka liked all of them. Even loved them, in a way. She loved Gingka's smile. She loved Kyouya's brilliant eyes, and even the scars beneath them. She loved Tsubasa's clear, soft laugh. She loved Yuu's infectious energy. She loved Benkei's enthusiasm. She loved Hyoma's jokes. She loved Masamune's hair, not that she'd ever tell him. She loved Kenta's quiet voice. Right at the back of her mind, almost buried under the rest, she loved the thrill of the sheer power that Ryuga exuded like an aura.

But she wouldn't want them to be her... her _boyfriend. _She _couldn't. _It just wouldn't be right. Because Madoka wanted to be with someone who would look at her as if she was the only thing in the world. She wanted someone to whom she would be the perfect complement, fitting against them and with them like a blader's glove around bey-scarred fingers. She didn't want to have to share her beloved – did anyone?

It just never worked, and they had tried. Nile had tried to go out with a pretty girl from his home village, but it only lasted about three weeks before they parted under a cloud, she citing the fact that she could tell he was keeping something from her. When confronted by Masamune, who liked to know about these things, Nile had been terribly confused. It had taken them weeks to realise just what had happened.

Anyone who wanted to be with one of the bladers would have to share. There was no two ways about it. The bladers were already in relationships so deep that it made Madoka shudder even to think about it.

Their constellations.

Every blader was bound to their constellation by bonds so tight that even something as powerful and mysterious as human love could not break it apart. Secrets were silently shared across that soul-deep tie, secrets that could never be spoken aloud even in the greatest of privacy and intimacy. The constellations had chosen their bearers, and were fiercely protective of them, not allowing anything to break apart what blading had brought together. Until the moment when the bladers decided that blading was no longer their first love, the constellations would not – _could not – _let any distractions break the concentration of their masters. After all, fighting a friend in a serious competition could be nasty enough, as Kyouya and Gingka demonstrated every single time a new tournament was announced (frankly, Madoka was getting fed up of fixing all the tornado-damage on Pegasus). Fighting someone closer than that...

It had already happened once, and with devastating effect. It had taken Hikaru months and months to recover enough to talk about what she had felt when L-Drago slammed her across the stadium. The words she had heard echoing in her mind had been very different to the ones that Tsubasa and Kyouya had heard. They had heard L-Drago taunting their weaknesses, detailing just _how_ they were going to be brought into the new world that L-Drago and Ryuga were going to make together.

But Hikaru, who had known Ryuga from a young age and remembered what the Dragon Emperor had once been to her? She had heard something very different.

_Do not think that you may touch him. Do not think that you may love him. He is mine alone._

None of the boys had been able to look at Hikaru for several hours afterwards, and Madoka thought she knew why. It was the knowledge that it wasn't the dark horror of L-Drago alone that would have responded so violently. Any and all of their own beasts would also have attacked Hikaru if they thought that she was coming between them and their blader.

There was a good reason why there were so few female bladers.

There could be no doubt in Madoka's mind that her boys were growing into fine young men, as handsome as the dawn and as brave as the finest warriors. And there could also be no doubt that one day, far away on the horizon, they and their constellations would be ready for the strangeness and complexities of unconditional human love. But for now, their hearts belonged to blading, and to their beasts above all.

Which was why Madoka would be spending Valentine's Day in her workshop, surrounded by the tools and blades that she loved. Maybe one of the boys would drop by to deliver or pick up their blade, and would stay to chat with her about something-or-other. Maybe not. But it wouldn't matter. Because she too was a blader, in her own way, and she loved that above all.


End file.
